The Toronto Maple Leafs played the first two games of their four-day Western Canada road swing as if they cannot wait for the end of the season to arrive, as losses to the Calgary Flames and Vancouver Canucks followed a similar blueprint of surrendering a flurry of early goals and showing little impetus to come back against the playoff contending clubs.
Toronto allowed four first-period goals(including two short-handed tallies) in a 6-3 loss to the Flames on Friday and surrendered a pair of goals within 32 seconds in the second period to provide the Canucks a safe cushion in a 4-1 victory at Rogers Arena on Saturday night.
Both games were marked with the all-too-familiar jersey toss signaling Leafs fans disdain and Saturday included the ignominious sight of Dion Phaneuf being sucker punched by Zack Kassian and mocked for turtling from noted Vancouver tough guy Jannik Hansen.
A determination of the future of the Leafs GM is possible, identifying a new head coach highly unlikely since potential candidates will still be involved in the playoffs and the status of players to be retained or dealt next to impossible since stating their intentions publicly would undermine the value and tip the hand of the organization in possible trade discussions over the summer.
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McEichel Race – Points(Games Played)
8. PHILADELPHIA 72(69) 7. NEW JERSEY 69(69) 6. COLUMBUS 64(69) 5. CAROLINA 60(68), 4. TORONTO 60(70) 3. ARIZONA 50(69), 2. EDMONTON 48(69), 1. BUFFALO 44(68)
Current Leafs odds at winning Draft Lottery(9.5%) Up 1.0%
Saturday/Sunday Results – Carolina splits weekend games with a loss to Florida and a 3-2 victory over Columbus. The Canes move into a tie with Toronto at 60 points, but still have two games in hand and that will increase to three after the Leafs play Edmonton on Monday night. Columbus split weekend games with a shootout win vs Edmonton and the loss to Carolina. The Jackets remain 4 points ahead of Toronto with a single game in hand.
The return of starting goalie Sergei Bobrovsky could prove to be good news to Toronto’s hope of finishing below Columbus, as the All-Star netminder went 3-1 in his four starts this week.
Saturday wins by Philadelphia and New Jersey coupled with the pair of Toronto losses have made it highly improbable that they will climb any higher than 25th in the standings.
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Sunday's Rumors
Sportsnet’s Eric Francis tweeted Sunday “Random prediction: minutes after Mike Babcock is named Leafs coach this summer Todd McLellan returns to Detroit as Wings bench boss.…
There is only one problem with this supposition; the possibility of Babcock heading to Toronto has gone from possible to remote in the span of two months. Short of the Leafs winning the draft lottery, it is unlikely that the Stanley Cup and two-time Olympic gold medal winning head coach will be headed to Toronto, even if MLSE makes him the highest paid head coach by a large margin.
The Red Wings may open up the vault to give Babcock the money he is looking for and a team like the Philadelphia Flyers could offer an opportunity with more talent to work with than the rebuilding Leafs. There is a better chance that McLellan ends up in Toronto than Babcock, since the Sharks missing the playoffs will probably lead to his departure from San Jose.
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In his weekend column, the Ottawa Sun’s Bruce Garrioch says that contract talks with Nazem Kadri could get interesting, especially in the wake of his benching last week for disciplinary reasons. Kadri’s camp could renew their demand for a long-term deal over $5 Million per season made prior to settling for a two year, $5.8 Million bridge deal in 2013.
The Leafs are likely to want a shorter term deal to see if the young center will make the changes the organization is looking for and will probably offer the restricted free agent salary arbitration, which would lead to a one-year deal in the neighborhood of $4 Million(comparable to teammate Tyler Bozak).
If arbitration is rejected as former Leaf Cody Franson did two years ago, it could lead to an extended holdout and potentially Kadri being traded, since Toronto management has likely reached their limit with the enigmatic but talented center.
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